The Bakery (a CakePHP site) has announced the release of CakePHP 2.0, a major shift in the framework with some very large changes to bring it up to the level of other full-stack frameworks currently offered for PHP.

The CakePHP core team is very exited to announce a major jump in the version numbering. CakePHP 2.0 stable is out! we have put endless hours into this release and great ideas have made it into the the framework for this version. [...] The overall CakePHP ecosystem has also been improved. [...] A huge thanks to all involved in terms of both contributions through commits, tickets, documentation edits, and otherwise contribute to the framework. Without you there would be no CakePHP.

Some huge changes have happened in this release including:

• Dropping PHP4 support
• Use of more native PHP functions
• PSR-0 compliance
• Object injection for libraries/components/helpers/etc
• Console tools completely rebuilt
• A move to PHPUnit tests (away from SimpleUnit)
• HTML support in form helpers
• Lazy-loading on just about everything making the overall experience faster
• Several new plugins like: DebugKit, Datasources, MongoDb, Migrations and AclExtras

They've created a few resources to help you get started with this new version including a new version of the book, a screencast and a migration guide.